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One of the better Mondays I’ve had of late, after hearing good ole’ Vic Toews has resigned/retired:

Vic Toews, the gruff,mustachioed minister who was the face of the Conservative government’s tough-on-crime agenda through federal cabinet postings in public safety and justice, has cleared the way for a newcomer to the task…He formally announced Monday he is stepping down as Public Safety Minister from Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s cabinet. He is also stepping aside as MP for the Manitoba riding of Provencher.

I could comment further, but I won’t: the old adage, “If you can’t say anything nice about someone, don’t say it”, applies here.

Let me state from the start here that I’m a practicing Christian. As a Christian – not as a partisan political observer – I think this move to stop non-Christian chaplains from ministering to prisoners of other faiths is idiotic:

The federal government is cancelling the contracts of all non-Christian chaplains at federal prisons, CBC News has learned. Inmates of other faiths, such as Muslims, Sikhs, Buddhists and Jews, will be expected to turn to Christian prison chaplains for religious counsel and guidance, according to the office of Public Safety Minister Vic Toews, who is also responsible for Canada’s penitentiaries.

The gun violence in Toronto at a party that tragically ended up with 2 people being dead and being possibly gang-related did not occur because gang members saw that judges had struck down mandatory minimums in the courts… nor would it have deterred them if the courts had ruled in the Conservatives favour on it. Going after the judiciary over those rulings publicly in an attempt to link it to gang-related tragedy in Toronto is classless, tasteless, and inappropriate.

I know the temptation to politicize everything like this is overwhelming – it appears to be genetically ingrained into the current Conservatives bloodline – but surely there is a limit at […]

A column in the Star today about how the Canadian government has been doing nothing to live up to its agreement it made with the US and Omar Khadr’s lawyers to bring Khadr home and out of the Guantanamo gulag:

Various United States officials have complained that Canada’s insolence is harming not only Omar, but U.S. interests. The United States’ credibility is damaged when it enters plea agreements that it cannot fulfill because the detainee’s own country will not hold up its end of the deal. Last week, the U.S. transferred Ibrahim al Qosi from Guantanamo to Sudan, where he arrived a free man. The U.S. can trust Sudan to […]

Actually, it’s not quite the National Post, despite some saying that. It’s actually one of their op-eds calling for the resignation. Still, I think that’s the first call I’ve seen for it, and the major surprise is it didn’t come first from the Star or even one of their writers:

As the government prepares to rethink its approach to cybercrime, Canadians have lost faith in the ability of Minister Toews to oversee that task. Prime Minister Stephen Harper should ask Mr. Toews to resign from his cabinet post immediately…it is clear that Mr. Toews is not suited to the job of steering such a contentious bill through even a majority […]

For Vic Toews or the Conservative government and the furore they’ve caused with Bill C-30, the “internet snooping” bill, as I prefer to call it, not the “lawful access” bill, or the law to get child pornographers off the internet bill, or whatever ridiculous name Vic Toews tries to come up with, this story isn’t exactly good timing for them:

Fourteen Vancouver police officers and one civilian staff member have been reprimanded for circulating pornography on work computers, the force announced on Thursday morning. The department says members circulated dozens of videos and images ranging from swimsuit models to pornography, but did not include any illegal images or child […]

There are several stories that caught my eye over the weekend. Here are some of them:

It appears the Mennonites are the latest group in Canada to get on the wrong side of the Conservative government:

The Mennonite Central Committee Canada reports on its website that the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) has turned down MCC’s proposal of $2.9 million for each of the next three years to provide food, water and income generation assistance for people in India, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Haiti, Bolivia, Mozambique and Ethiopia. MCC is a long-time partner of CIDA’s in overseas development projects. The organization is highly respected and is scrupulously non-partisan in its approach to […]